


The Opposite of Victory

by rude_not_ginger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A walk through the mind of Sherlock Holmes during <i>A Scandal in Belgravia.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Opposite of Victory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LyraNgalia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/gifts).



She defeats you.

It is not as though you have never felt defeat before. There are, on three separate occasions, where you can remember being defeated wholly and completely. Defeat is a standard emotion, one that comes now with a familiar sense of frustration and disappointment.

It is not as many in the police department see it. You do _feel_. Defeat, frustration, anger. These are things that come with failure. Happiness, elation, excitement. They come with puzzles and new, interesting crimes. Boredom---well, that comes with simply anything at all that is _normal_. There are varying levels of these emotions, and they exist when things happen to you.

It is simply that you do not feel the way they do. John Watson put it best when he told you that you do not exist on the same _wavelength_ as other people. Your emotions exist at different frequencies. You can see others, you can tell how they are feeling based on facial gestures and vocal pitch. You even know how you are expected to feel in given situations, though age and experience has made you decide that conforming to their expectations is a waste of time. You just do not have the same feelings.

But _her_. Prior to her existence in your world, you do not remember feeling desire for a person. Oh, desire for release, for diversion, even a mild sense of attraction towards Jim's diabolical puzzle, those all happened. But _her_ , she's different. She makes something both warm and cold pool in your stomach and you find that familiar emotion of _confusion_ simmer under your skin. Like Jim, she is something new.

The feel of hard leather scrapes across your skin as she traces the riding crop along your jaw. She is speaking to you, reminding you that _she has beaten you_ , and her voice cuts like a scalpel but still feels as smooth as a powdered prophylactic glove. How can someone be so utterly contrary and yet as captivating as a crime scene? You realize now you _should have_ been looking around her flat, you _should have_ seen so much more than you did, but you were standing there, asking her idiotic questions. Engrossed in her.

By the morning you have passed the drugs she put into your system and she feels like a dream. It is impossible to say whether she is a good dream or a bad dream. It more or less feels like one of those awkward, embarrassing dreams you remember from your early teenage years. The sort of dream that leaves you waking up with an erection and a feeling of having done something terribly wrong. It would be the sort of dream you would forcibly forget, except she is _everywhere_. You can smell her on your coat; you can smell her in the curtains by your window. And even if the London air were to stop up your nose, you could hear her moan every time she texts.

The noise is _rude_ , Mrs. Hudson says, and John goads you about it until, you're embarrassed to find, your face is actually _flushing_ at the whole business. Flushing. Blushing. How _embarrassing_.

Embarrassment is something you do feel, though usually it's reserved for you regarding your own errors, on getting something wrong or making some gross miscalculation. This, this Woman, she's brought something else out. She's brought out embarrassment due to a rush of blood to a part of your body that does not normally experience such sensations.

The sexual implication of that thought rushes through your mind next, and the blush deepens. Aggravating. The entire thing is aggravating. Were you not already deeply annoyed with Mycroft, you might think to ask him the meanings of all of this. He would not know, you decide. His disinterest in emotion far exceeds your own.

_Defeat: From the late 14th century. Originally thought to have come from the French_ defeter _or "to undo." Conjugations for the singular male are, as with most etymological studies of words, the most strongly suspected conjugations to have been brought into English._

And just like that, she is _gone_. It is like a scissor has cut out part of what was holding your stomach together as you step from the mortuary. It's a miracle that Mycroft has a cigarette, because it gives you something to focus on, something to keep you breathing correctly.

Other people cry. Other people grieve, and they grieve openly and completely when they lose someone they love. You see them standing there, holding each other on Christmas Day, and sobbing. They miss the person who has died (child, aged seven at most, died in car accident from the scrape on the father's temple). And you, you stand there with Mycroft and smoke and do not even feel tears prick your eyes.

Your grief is on a different wavelength. The Woman is gone, but it is not just her absence that upsets you. Something utterly new for you is gone, and the way she made you feel standard emotions, those are gone. No, not gone. There, still, but without answers. Always without answers.

"Do you ever wonder if there's something wrong with us?" you say. It is as close as you will ever come to asking your brother for emotional advice.

His reply is cryptic, unfulfilling, and utterly Mycroft Holmes. But, as he says, you barely knew her. The half-chuckle you let out is completely without humor. Barely knew her, yes. But she was brand new. She changed you, and no one changes you. They merely move around you, like water parting for something of a different consistency. But not her. No. No, she did more than simply _part_.

Except now. Now she has _parted_ in a very different way and that---that makes you _ache_.

Aching for a person. Perhaps, even in death, she has changed you again.

On your walk home, you begin to think of music. Something slow, rising up and down in sharp peaks, like the beat of a heart on a monitor.

_Other historians believe the Anglo-French term_ desfaire _is more likely the term to have become "defeat". Conjugations of the word lead to_ desfait _, though many hours in M. Tate's dull French classes have taught you that in the end, the French don't really care what one does, only so long as it is pronounced correctly._

She returns to life less than a week later.

You have been following John regularly. Partially it is out of boredom, and partially out of something clutching at your chest like fear. John does not part for you either, and you cannot stand to lose him as well. Your behavior this past week has been getting impressively worse, and you've reached the point of not-sleeping and not-eating where you no longer think you should have to care. So you follow him.

And she's alive.

You listen just long enough for the phone to transmit her text, for the moan to echo through the hallway, before you turn and leave. You half expect John to catch up with you, but part of you is especially grateful that he does not.

You walk in a haze. Your actions of the previous days start to become clearer, and the pain you've been feeling becomes more solid, more real. No, she is not dead, but the relief you feel right now is palpable. You are moving through relief. It is---it is not how you have ever felt before. In this moment, the fact that she is alive feels like the most important thing you have ever known.

And that is not how you are. You tell yourself that you are above emotions, that they do not fix anything. You even try to tell yourself that Mycroft is right (perish the thought) and that caring is not an advantage. But there it is, that relief. It feels _good_ to be so relieved. That doesn't make sense. Emotions don't feel _good_ , they feel confusing and frustrating and they slow you down, as they're slowing you down now. And yet---and yet---

_Other etymological historians believe the term "defeat" may have come from a Latin vulgarity,_ diffacere _, which means "to destroy". Fitting, you think._

Time does not move. It does not go anywhere, it does not properly exist as anything but a word for a non-physical concept. So, therefore, the fact that months have passed and your phone has not moaned in her breathy tone should not bother you.

But months have passed. And then there, there she is. She's in your flat, in your bed. Invading your space, filling it up with her her _her_. She is a mystery. She is driving you mad and making you want to unravel her and and _and_ \----

There's a mystery here. And mystery is your first love, your truest love, the love beyond all else. No matter what she is beginning to signify or already signifies in your life, she can not and will not break you away from your love of the puzzle.

"Coventry," you say to John. Except John isn't there, it's just her. Her, with her hair dried in soft ringlets and her face smooth and makeup-free. The light from the fireplace (and when was that lit?) dances off of her face and skin. She's---well, she's not an entirely unsensual being to look at. Objectively speaking. Although you insist that you do not feel that sort of a thing, you do find yourself---not _moved_ , nothing quite so simple, but…diverted.

Your first love is pushed aside as she moves in front of you, her hand on yours. She's asking you to dinner _again_ , and for the first time you realize she doesn't mean that she's hungry. She means a date, that thing that John does with his girlfriends that mean he's with someone he likes. 

She's implying she likes you, in the way that John likes his girlfriends. You would be insulted, except her eyes are dark and she's touching your hand and other things seem…well, they seem insignificant to that fact.

Dilated eyes. Response to being aroused. She is aroused by you in your natural habitat, being yourself. This is not something you have ever experienced. People have been aroused by your personas, and Molly is unbelievably smitten by who she wishes you were, but the Woman, _this_ Woman, she is aroused by _you_.

You find yourself longing for more data. More information. Are her eyes dilated for another reason? What else could you do to find out? She is flirting, you are speaking, and you turn your hand in hers to press your fingertips against her heartbeat.

Pulse elevated. Like yours.

_The root of "defeat" as a combat situation didn't come about until the late 16th century. To undo victory, to remove it. You never understood the idea of defeat as the undoing of victory before. It suddenly makes sense._

You sit in shame. Away from her, facing the door you wish she'd just walk through. Talking about the game, talking about how well she played you, played Mycrot, played the whole of Great Britain.

And you can't help but admire her, admire the way she pulls down your big brother, admires the way she shows just how cold she can be. Had the events from earlier in the evening not taken place, you'd believe this act.

She brushed past you on the plane, now she's sitting on the opposite end of the room and continuing to brush past you, acting as though you're not there. That she'll have you on a leash. It surprises you, truly, how much it hurts. And it does hurt. Like the death of the Woman before, the removal of something new and sentimental but oddly wonderful, but somehow this is worse. This is worse because it's her choice to leave you.

And she does it all so coldly, so perfectly. All her dominos in a line. If the events from earlier in the evening hadn't taken place, you would believe she'd planned every last piece of this.

Her eyes. Her pulse. Her desiring you for you, Sherlock Holmes. Oh, but she never called you that, she always called you "Mr. Holmes", in some perversely twisted form of politeness. Or is it? Is she avoiding your name?

Disguises are self-portraits. As you have become wrapped in her, she has become wrapped in you. You let out a breath you were not aware you had been holding. It makes sense, it clicks into place.

"No," you say. You stand, step over to her, explain that sentiment is what is found in the losing side. _Her_ side.

You reach out a hand, press your fingers to her pulse. Her eyes are dark. She is perfectly poised, hair up in a tight, careful knot and her makeup is perfect. All the same, she is still something not unsensual to look at. She moves her eyes from yours and down to your mouth. She expects you to kiss her.

Instead, you win. Break her apart, show her just how little you value love, how clinically you can analyze it. Because, for you, love is unimportant. Love _must_ be unimportant, and she is a diversion, she is not the game. She is beyond worthless.

You defeat her.

Completely. Utterly. Mercilessly. You do to her what she would have done to you. And then, as punishment, give her to Mycroft. He will leave her, you know, outside of his doorstep, penniless and alone.

She is afraid. She begs for you to help her. Tears run down her face, smearing her makeup. Her face is flushed, embarrassed. You tilt your head and try to remember what it is you found so sensual about her just moments before. Perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

"Sorry about dinner."

+~

It has been sixteen days. You listen to Mycroft's voicemails and follow his emails and watch what has happened to her. The Woman, _that_ Woman. She is somewhere out there and she's going to suffer for her misbehavior. It is not your responsibility to care.

And yet, you book the flight. You obtain an outfit, you get a sword. The days before are a haze and you're there, as her executioner in Karachi, fulfilling the wish of a jealous multibillionaire. 

You're here because not being here was completely unthinkable.

Because you are the only one who understands her. You are the only person on the planet who wants to. Sentiment. Idiotic.

You find yourself longing for more data, something to explain why you are here. Why it matters to be here, beyond sentiment.

She sends her last text. A last request, and an odd one. She does not fight them now. The text goes. It goes right to your pocket. That cool, sexual moan fills the darkened field.

She turns. Her hair is matted and dirty and her face is raw, red, and without makeup. Her eyes are red and her cheeks are wet with tears. She looks stunned to see you, but there is no small amount of defiance in that gaze, either. She has lost everything, but here she has not lost her pride.

She is not an unsensual being to look at.

You wonder if she knows why you're here. Why you came back for her. Why you have un-done your own victory in order to save her.

She has defeated you.


End file.
